MacOs Catalina add music manually on iPhone 11

Well. I finally got this to work. No thanks to Apple, who never posted how to do this or gave me an answer when I called support. But this worked for me:

plug in phone

in finder, select iphone from sidebar, then select ‘music’ at top menu bar

if needed, select ‘sync’ for ‘selected artist, albums, ect’ / apply

on Music app, select song or songs you want to move to iphone

right click, choose ‘add to devise’/choose iphone

With 10.15.2 set to manually control music, click on your device in finder and select manual control. Open Apple Music and select Artist or Albums or what ever on the left, Highlight the songs that you want to copy across, drag them over to your device on the left and then click on your device and there they are.

The problem has been solved, I believe, but we've got to get our heads around it.

Hey I feel your pain. I was finally able to get it to work. I replied to the original post, but in case you can't find it, see below:

karawanz wrote:

In case anyone is still having issues, here's what worked for me. [iPhone version 13.3, macOS Catalina 10.15.2]

On your iPhone: Go to Settings -> Music -> Turn off "Sync Downloads"

On your Mac: Open Music app -> Preferences -> uncheck "Sync Library"

Now, simply drag and drop songs directly onto your device icon on the left (make sure device is highlighted as you hover over while dropping)

Hope that works for you too!

AHA! I was having this same problem but none of the solutions here worked for me (though I admit I skimmed). What ultimately fixed it for me was this:

1. Unplug your phone from your Mac.
2. On your iPhone go to: Settings > General > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy
3. Plug your phone back into your Mac. Click "Trust" When the "Trust this computer?" prompt appears.
4. On your Mac, "Trust" When the "Trust this iPhone?" prompt appears

I can now copy songs right from Catalina's Music app onto my iPhone. I hope this works for you!

The option of dragging from the Music App into the Finder with the phone selected as a location worked for me. Unbelievable!

In the Finder window, click on the iPhone in the sidebar. This will show the familiar Sync window that iTunes used to have. Same operations make it easier to veteran iTunes users.

I just updated to Catalina and updated my iPhone and have also discovered this problem. Thanks to all who wrote about this because I thought I was going crazy.

To everyone who suggests "Just turn on Manage Music manually" please stop. You're missing the point. Here's what I've discovered. Perhaps someone from Apple will take note? BTW - I'm writing " iTunes" in place of the new "MUSIC" name for the app.

• I can no longer Drag and Drop songs from iTunes into my iPhone, unless the songs have been in the library for a while. I have no clue why that is. If I download an album from Bandcamp and import it into iTunes, I can't then copy it into my iPhone via Drag and Drop. Also, the same issue occurs when I rip a newly purchased CD into iTunes.
• I can make a Playlist of the newly downloaded album (simply by dragging the entire album into the left sidebar of iTunes). Then I can drag and drop that playlist into the iPhone, but why in the world would anyone consider that an improvement? And why hide that information from users?
• For those who mentioned using a Right Click and choosing Add To Device -- again, that only seems to work with older tracks. With my newly ripped or downloaded tracks, Add to Device is either not available (if I'm clicking on the songs) or greyed out in the menu bar.
• Another weird thing - I can't Drag and Drop tracks from my Desktop into iTunes if I'm in the "Recently Added" window. I can Drag and Drop from my desktop to iTunes if I'm in the Songs window. Seems odd. MLately I've been using the menubar's IMPORT function instead when bringing a new album into iTunes.

BTW - I generally listen to entire albums, so making Playlists of select songs is not something I do. Perhaps Apple has forgotten that people purchase and listen to entire albums?

One more weird thing - this recent upgrade also changes how Apple's Carplay looks in my car. Generally, the improvements there are excellent. However, the need to import via Playlists into my iPhone has an unintended impact. Now, when I select Recently Added from the Music App in Carplay, all my new albums have two icons - one for the album and another from the Playlist of the album. So I only see half as many albums at once. That's annoying.

I have discovered that I can manually delete the Playlists from within my iPhone and it doesn't delete the song files. In fact, a user's ability to manage songs and playlists within the iPhone has improved, which is lucky because this screw up with the iTunes/Music app sucks big time. Something tells me the people who did this don't actually listen to full albums. They just build Playlists from lots of songs. If you do that, this might all seem fine.

I have not found any other workarounds that are reliable for this issue.

Did you try the solution mentioned below?

On your iPhone: Go to Settings -> Music -> Turn off "Sync Downloads"

On your Mac: Open Music app -> Preferences -> uncheck "Sync Library"

Now, simply drag and drop songs directly onto your device icon on the left (make sure device is highlighted as you hover over while dropping)

This worked for me post Catalina with new songs as well.

I made a very detailed reply describing what i ended up doing but the post button hung up on me and the reply was lost.

In short is this: I don't see any intention from Apple to fix the problem so i gave up, i made 1 playlist and all the music i want on the iphone on the mac, i add and remove the music manually from that playlist and sync only that playlist over wifi. hope this helps anybody else stuck with this.

Yep! Drag and drop works with playlists too. The songs show up right away.

I have tried everything suggested here and nothing works well at all. I tried the sync and non-sync methods and they still won't add random files of music, not just to playlists but to my phone. I'm on all the latest software updates, so that shouldn't be the problem.

I also signed up for Apple Cloud thinking that would help. It doesn't.

When I have tried to add music/playlist to my iPhone, via the finder and Apple Music, it takes forever and then some files won't transfer so I have to unplug and restart the manual sync. Then the system switches all of the "sync" options (phone and laptop) to "on." Then it starts the process all over again.

This morning, I tried this again:

bandic00t wrote:

Did you try the solution mentioned below?

On your iPhone: Go to Settings -> Music -> Turn off "Sync Downloads"

On your Mac: Open Music app -> Preferences -> uncheck "Sync Library"

Now, simply drag and drop songs directly onto your device icon on the left (make sure device is highlighted as you hover over while dropping)

This worked for me post Catalina with new songs as well.

It totally messed everything up and when I re-synced, of course it took forever and then there were STILL files on the iPhone that I had to manually download in the music app on the phone - playlist by playlist.

I added a CD yesterday and it wouldn't add to my iPhone until I synced. Well, some did and some did not. This was after trying to drag and drop the playlist I made of that CD to my iPhone via the finder. They all should have added since they were all imported from the same CD in the same format.

Speaking of which, there are many audio files that just refuse to sync and/or get dropped manually in the finder. They were fine before this horrible update.

I'm tired of fighting with Apple Music and my iPhone every time I want to add new music. Not only does it not work correctly, but it takes forever. I'm done.

I'm going to look for a third party app/software and simply delete everything from Apple Music and re-upload my music to that.

If anyone has any links to music apps/software, that would be great.

If that doesn't work, the next time I upgrade my phone I'll switch to Android.

Seriously Apple, you really screwed this one up and you don't even seem to care. :(

and last time this happened if i restarted my computer i could actually move music to my phone! imagine!!!!

But obviously restarting my entire computer every time i want to put a playlist on my phone... ugggggg...... i'll try this later and report back if that is even the case.

There's still no way to add individual songs to your phone from a desktop, as you did previously in iTunes under IOS 13.4 and Catalina 10.15.4. A giant step backwards for Apple, who just doesn't care about restoring this much needed feature. They obviously just want you to subscribe to their streaming service instead, which I will never do. Especially after this.

You can't even view the songs on your iPhone by "Date added" anymore. By splitting iTunes into separate components, they ruined a little bit of each application!

This is the best detailed description of what is going on that I have read so far.

the only thing I would add is that the new Sync interface sucks wax fruit. A spinning circle and then a little timer? That’s it?

So much for the details. Apple has got to be reading this stuff. I’m really hoping R&D takes notice and gives us back some of what made iTunes so great. Come on Apple, we know you can do it.